Pioneering generative artist propelled by personal tragedy — Matt Kane, NFT Creator  – Cointelegraph Magazine

If there’s ever been an artist suited for the digital renaissance of putting art on the blockchain, it would be Matt Kane — a traditional artist who transitioned into digital art by writing his own software and pushing boundaries impossible in the physical art world. 

Kane is most known for his collection “Gazers,” which launched in December 2021 and is considered by many to be an OG among generative artists. He recently released his collection Anons, which is centered around understanding identity through art and immortalizing true anons from yesteryear.

Kane spent a chunk of his career as a software developer but was always experimental with different artistic mediums, including physical canvas. However, the limitations of the physical art world made the American ponder whether digital art could remove many of the barriers to better his vision for creating art.

“In my 20s and 30s, I was really trying to find what the right medium for my voice was. I’ve spent a lot of time experimenting with canvas and fabric because I was really interested in pattern. But I realized it’s not the medium that matters — it’s my vision. It’s how I get my vision and my mind out into the world,” Kane tells Magazine. 

“Within that realization, I knew I had to learn to code because there’s so many physical limitations to traditional art. Code circumvents the limitations of our physical bodies and time. It allows us to manifest our visions, and so it’s become the perfect medium for me.”

Kane had heard about NFTs a week before CryptoPunks launched in June 2017 through a Quora article, but he remained an observer while he continued to create and tinker with digital art, a medium that had captured his deep curiosity as early as 18. 

“When I read this [Quora] article, and it talked about NFTs — I understood from years before what Bitcoin was and the blockchain — it just all snapped, and I remember thinking, this is what I’m looking for. It’s going to allow me to sell digital work, and prints can be optional. What I’ll be creating are actually paintings as databases, and this is going to be the way that I’m going to be able to do that. To transmit files and ownership of the artwork,” says Kane. 

Despite being introduced to the concept of digital art provenance via NFTs in 2017, it wasn’t until May 2019 that Kane minted his first NFT, M87 Black Hole Deconstruction, on SuperRare. 

“I watched the space develop just before Punks and looked on. I was Googling blockchain galleries, and there were none. That was the paradigm I was in at the time. I thought I needed to find a gallery to represent me on the blockchain. Now I’m very much about self-representation and cutting out the middleman, but back then, I was still in that paradigm,” Kane says. 

“In 2018, I watched places like Dada, SuperRare and KnownOrigin come out in the summer of 2018. I continued to watch for another six to 12 months and then decided to pull the trigger,” he adds. 

Lost in code dealing with personal tragedy

Kane’s journey to digital artist stardom has been bittersweet, however, as he lost a close friend to suicide while on the way to visit her in 2013. This left the then 32-year-old devastated and even, at one point, contending with some of his own suicidal thoughts. 

“During that time, I had left my life in Seattle trying to find something new and was already in an upheaval. Then losing her — it really threw me quite into an abyss. I was on the road and about a week away from seeing her. It made me wonder, what if I had visited her earlier? It was really devastating,” Kane shares. 

“I ended up in Texas and just making really destructive decisions. I caught myself in a moment of my own suicidal ideations and realized I was in a really bad place.”

“The next day, I bought a train ticket to LA to go visit my friend out there, and I think I stayed out there for a month. It was out there that I kind of just took some breaths, and I assessed my life and where I was. I was looking into my future and understanding how devastated I was and understanding my desire to rejoin society, my desire to get on with my life. I had years in front of me that were going to be wasted, and so I decided I’m going to just start coding.”

Kane used coding as a way to distract his mind from the painful emotional baggage he was dealing with.

“It was math, and it was distracting my brain. I couldn’t think about emotions or how I was depressed. It was like I needed to figure out how to use sine and cosine to make this brush. It was really about building a tool of expression for the future when it would be safe to express myself again,” says Kane. 

Had it not been for the tragedy of losing a…